conversation between Buckminister Fuller, Andrea Zittel, bell hooks, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles

I know that I am not a category, a hybrid specialization,
I am not a thing-a noun,
I seem to be a verb-
an evolutionary process-
an integral function of the universe
and so are you.
-Buckminster Fuller

Andrea Zittel: That's very poetic, buckminster, but you have to also acknowledge that you are a person-

bell hooks: you have a body

AZ- yes, a body, that is a physical thing, a noun, and that you are processing information through that specific body. Phenomena have happened that lead to you, and you in turn have the power to cause change, but in that you are a human with opinions and experiences, you cannot be purely 'an evolutionary process', you process data through your lens of experience.

bh: denying that body is dangerous, because it suggests that your experience is infact an objective fact.

BF: of course there are specifics of my life that have led me to the body of work that I am doing, but that does not negate the fact that I am developing innovative material. It is considered, researched, tested, and I believe to be objectively beneficial to a world in crisis. The dymaxion car and dymaxion house will make modern life possible for all people. My invention of them is not an outpouring of myself, an autobiography, but stand as autonomous works of engineering and architecture.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles: What do you mean by 'autonomous'?

BF:It is important to me that my work be understood as outside of all pre-existing thought. What I am trying to acheive is new and revolutionary. I am not a specialist, drawing upon the work of previous intellectuals in order to refine this useless body of thought that we label academia, but rather a force for the new synthesis of information that will and does produce truth that is actually useful to society at large.

bh: I appreciate that you acknowledge the limited influence of educated white, male academics, have chosen to distance yourself from this cannon, and are attempting to put your research towards social change. But I also need to ask you how you think this is possible- to work both empirically and entirely indepedently. I think it's delusional and disrespectful not to acknowledge your influences.

MLU: and really fucking male! who do you think you are, claiming independence from all thought previous to yours?! I've never heard anything more narcisistic. Your claims at autonomy are a symptom of the overblown male ego that exactly characterizes the body of thinkers you are trying to distancing yourself from. The engineering of housing requires collaboration and upkeep. You may think of yourself as entirely autonomous, but who is going to pump the gas for your dymaxion car and wash your dymaxion toilet? By claiming that you can only be relevant by working entirely independently you are invalidating the work that supports you: maintenence work. the jobs of the working class and of women. Really, Buckminster, what has your work accomplished? By refusing to collaborate ,almost everything you invented has failed to go in to production, and your work has been relegated to the rhelm of ideas that you claim you are not a part of.

AZ: Mierle, I see where you're coming from, but I also want to assert that unrealized does not mean unproductive. Following that logic, and concept, any artwork that does not translate in to commodifiable economic product is not useful to society. My work, like buckministers, is utilitarin in orientation but exists as a suggestion, a model, an idea, rather than an actuality. I believe this is the place of artists- to suggest what might be possible but isn't yet, based on knowledge of what is necessary. To say that responses to problems have to yeild solutions is also to say that those who don't yeild solutions, such as artists, must only address address irrelevant or apolitical topics.

bh: Of course I believe that it is valid and wonderful for artists to address contemporary problems, but you must understand the impracticality of your work as a privilege you have been afforded as a fine artist, Andrea. In a more technical discipline, the lack of applicability and coherent explainations of your inventions would be seen as a sign of failure.

BF: But exactly, it is crucial not to see Andrea and I as failures because we are working independently to process the situation of today's world.

bh: Then do you see yourself as an artist more so than an inventor or architect?

MLU: why are you forcing him to make that distinction? Whatever you do is art is art is art.



-Buckminster Fuller is a bizarre architect from the 60's, best known for inventing the geodesic dome, interested in egalitarian efficiency but often retroactively appointed a father of ecological design
-Andrea Zittel is a contemporary artist working with themes of waste reduction and efficiency. She blurs the distinction between pragmatic object and art-peice, and studio practice and display space in a way that I find really inspiring.
-bell hooks is a a writer and teacher who deals with talks a lot about race, gender, pedagogy. I've read too little or her work to really be able to include her in this. I just think she's great.
-Mierle Laderman Ukeles is a feminist conceptual/performance artist from the 70's(?) whose work I'm not always so in to but who has said some things I find really inspiring about the connections between sexism, classism and ecological crisis.


This debate came out of reading some of Buckminister's autobiography yesterday. As the only man whose work I'm really looking at right now and rather a cocky figure, I wanted to argue with him but instead imagined how some women I think highly of would talk to him. Of course, none of these people would probably actually say what I attribute to them. The discipline of fine arts a liberation from the need to research comprehensively or site my sources? Or maybe just an excuse not to? Or a means to incorperate the intuitive and emotional with equal weight?

on material waste and conceptual product: the impulse to sort and the need to feel

to not throw out is to save
to sort is to make sense of
to document is to be accountable for
and then I am saved, I make sense, I am accountable.

but all attempts at comprehensiveness fall flat
and I am not exempt, not above.
The line of autonomy- of my belonging, my trash, my ideas- is guessed at and arbitrarily drawn

I can show you some things I've kept out of the garbage (for now)
and I can show you that I am trying to be thorough
But, rather than fabricate completion, I would rather show you that I am honestly trying
and honestly failing to push through confusion in to clarity
I am stuck here, with you, in that soup.

Earth dismantled in to elements, synthesized in to objects without regard for the need to dismantle them back in to elements digestable by the earth.
research, observations in to the printed word, in to the telephone, on to the internet- the knowledge that is known grows faster than the population. There is too much for any one person to hold in themself as true.
Water down the drain, exhaust out the engine, thoughts out the keyboard, moving too fast to process

life on earth is bound to get more complicated, more tangled. more violent. more toxic. more idiotic. more misunderstood.
Where analytical sense stops short emotion begins.
and so we will either shut ourselves off or feel more overwhelmed, more paniced, more futile, more lonely, more sad
The common denominator is urgency. This is what exists and what we must make grow.

First Post

As the conclusion to my college education, I have been afforded eight months of independent art work and a giant, windowless room in which to do it. This blog is a second attempt (following a muttled, too-serious wikispace that you can find at http://statetheproblem.wikispaces.com/) at creating a format for process writing and reflection. It is almost december. I am three months in to this work and I feel like I am just beginning.

"The obligation of the artist is not to solve the problem, but to state the problem correctly"- Anton Chekhov

The title of this space comes from the above Anton Chekhov quote that my friend showed me. I've never read any Checkhov, so it feels inauthentic to use this quote (and in fact...what's the deal with mining written words for quotes, anyway? probably more on that at some point), but it makes me feel like the work I am doing is urgent- perhaps truthfully or perhaps delusionally.

The ecological crisis is what I am calling today's problem. It is chaotic, absurd, emotional, uncatagorizable. There are mountains and mountains of evidence and a host of theories trying to connect and systematize what is happening on earth as we sit. privitization? globalization? shock doctrine? structural racism? gaia hypothesis? These are the ideas sitting as objects on my studio bookshelf, rather useless between my fabric collection and some sculptures made out of trash bags wrapped in string. There are a million ways to synthesize what we see happening socially, spacially, ecologically today- so much so that the theories themseves call to be synthesized.

This makes me feel panicked. I want to have an all-encompassing system by which to understand what I am experiencing every day, what's 'really going on'. I often feel like I already have this system within me- that if I think, write, research, read, draw, chart, calculate enough than some clear, simplifiable way to visualize the mess of behaviors and crisis will emerge. Three months of preliminary work made me think this was impossible, and a couple of weeks ago I was convinced that all of my ideas about art about research, about visualizing panic, about fusing working and display space were inherently faulty and I had to 'start over'. I had to come to terms with the fact that grandeous efforts are not inappropriate as long as I am ready for failure- or at least incompletion. Large as my room and my chunk of free time might seem, ultimately I am one person in one place for one year and at the end of it, I will barely have begun.

Coming out of the other end of this realization, it is time to really begin.